He just makes my heart smile!

Daddy showed up at lunch today with Dragon (a side note, I found his Halloween costume on Saturday at Old Navy, and it's a dragon costume!). They got here a little before noon, and I don't take my lunch until noon, so Daddy was just sitting in my office with Andrew on his lap. I was trying to work, but out of the corner of my eye, Andrew was giving me the biggest smile! I smiled back at him and tried to finish up what I was doing. I just kept thinking how lucky I am to have both of these "boys" in my life. Daddy said something then, something to the effect of, "this is my baby in my lap". :) We don't dare set him down when my office door is open because out the hallway he will go! I'm always afraid a resident is going to trip over him (or run him over with a wheelchair).

Ah, the memories Dragon will have someday. I just know he's going to ask me why he remembers a sea of people in wheelchairs with gray hair and glasses! They love him though; they really do. He elicits a lot of return smiles for his big grin!

Funny habit...

I noticed something a couple months ago but forgot to post about it. Andrew does not like things to stay together. Case in point: he has these stackable cups (6 different colorful plastic cups that fit inside one another from littlest to biggest). Anytime I hand them to him together, he has to dump them out. He can't resist! The same goes for his Fisher Price Rock-a-Stack (you know the 5 colorful rings that stack on top of one another on that yellow tube-looking thing?). I love putting it together and he loves dumping it upside down. I build him beautiful towers with his wooden blocks and I love watching him make a beeline for it so he can smash it down. Hehe--my little guy is the Master of Destruction. Such a boy!

Also, Andrew loves books. He loves being read to. He gets a big smile on his face when I grab one of his favorite books (I like I Love You Through and Through). He drools the entire time I read (I like to think I'm activating his pre-frontal cortex or something exciting like that). :)

New layout!

Sweet. For those of you that don't already know, I am obsessed with the color aqua (any variations of it--teal, sea green, etc). If you were to look in my closet, you would see that an insane amount of my clothing is in the aqua family (I have to work really hard on myself to buy something red).

I think this new layout matches my personality so I had to update the boring default Blogger layout to reflect that.

-Back to regular programming-

1 year check-up

It was last Wednesday--I apologize for not updating until now! He's doing great--he weighs 22 lbs, 1 oz (he was 6 lbs, 6 oz. at birth, so he has more than tripled his weight); he is 30.55 inches long. The doctor (whom Andrew hasn't seen since his 2 day check-up, since every other appointment has been with the Nurse Practitioner) said Andrew is doing great. He's just above the 50th percentile for height, and just below the 50th for weight.

He's funny--Dr. Manson. Andrew was on the exam table and he was pretty active and Dr. M. said, "No diving without a parachute!" because I think he thought Andrew was going to jump off. Andrew is pretty good with boundaries though--he will crawl around the bed and go to the edge but not go off the edge. Maybe it's just a coincidence.

Anyway, the next appointment is at 18 months.

He knows things!

Words, that is. Andrew knows a lot of words. In the morning, Daddy tells me that he'll say, "Bluebods?" (our strange abbreviation for blueberries...it started a long time ago and for some reason we just stuck with it) , and when he says this, Andrew will crawl over to his high chair in anticipation. He'll then proceed to make a lot of squealing noises until he is up in his chair with "Bluebods" in front of him. So cute!

Daddy also said that yesterday or today he said, "Do you want to take a bath?", and Andrew crawled into the bathroom.

Tonight Daddy said, "Car ride?" and Andrew crawled towards the front door, fussing. We weren't going in the car, so then I had to distract him with something else.

Also, the 2nd day he had his new ball (my mom got it for him), we would say, "ball" and Andrew would go get his ball.

I love it!

Andrew also does this cute thing when he crawls around--he'll hum a little song. It goes, "m m m"....."m m m"... always sets of three. If I start doing it too, he'll smile and repeat. He has even done this while nursing!

The shower is evil....

Andrew gets up when I do in the morning, right around 6:30 a.m. In his early days, I'd set the bouncy seat down on the bathroom floor so he could chill while I was in the shower. He then went through a phase where he'd sleep until 7:30 or so, so I would just go get him when I was done getting ready for work, and then I'd change/feed him.

Now, he usually gets up at 6:30 so I bring him in the bathroom (the husband has a new habit of metal detecting every morning and he leaves around 5:45/6:00 a.m....don't even ask).

Anyway, Andrew has decided that when Mommy steps into the shower, she is actually stepping into another dimension. He bawls his little heart out as soon as I slide that shower curtain. I have to leave one end open and talk/wave to him so he calms down. The other option is to take a bath while he leans over the edge, splashing his hands in the water. No amount of toys help/distract in this situation. I can only hope he learns that Mommy is fine and she will be out of the shower in 5-6 minutes.

Happy 1st birthday, Andrew!

Another photo blog for our readers. Hope you don't mind the pics! I literally take thousands of them and only share a few of my favorites with the blog world.

So, the birthday was pretty much celebrated for 2 days. :) Okay, well, we went to Great-Grandma and Grandpa's house as we do every Sunday so we got to celebrate with that crowd first (all of Andrew's great aunts and uncles and second cousins).

This was from yesterday morning at our house. I had to take a pic of his daily breakfast of blueberries, bananas, and Cheerios! I just like the look on his face and love his hair in this one...

This is at Great-Grandma & Grandpa's house. Andrew was snoozing in the shade (the pool was way too cold to go in due to our recent cold nights).

Cake time!!!

This is why I call him 'Cheeseball'

Now these are from today from the party at our house. Andrew loved the gift from his Aunt Pixy--it was 2 wooden puzzles. The knobs on them looked like boobies and he was mesmerized! He didn't care about anything else (note that one of them is in his mouth)!
(Left to right: Mommy, Andrew, and Aunt Kimmy...Mikayla, behind Andrew, is his cousin)

Awaiting the cake...look at his feet! He always does this in his high chair. Oh, ginormous feet to match those ginormous hands mentioned in the previous plum post...LOL!

My mom made a SWEET (literally) angelfood cake with strawberries and whipped cream. YUM!
Really digging in now...

That's it! All in all, it was a great birthday. He took a very short nap this morning (like 1/2 hour around 10:20 a.m.) so I knew he was tired later on, but I didn't want him to be sleeping when the party started. Around 4:15 pm (he had to be so tired by now), Andrew decided to give me such a sweet present. I went to sit down in the chair in the living room and he crawled up to me and whined and I asked him, "Oh, you wanna come up by Mommy?" and I laid his head on my chest and he closed his eyes. He just wanted to snuggle! I patted his bum for a moment and he was sound asleep. That was the fastest he's ever fallen asleep and it's not usual for him to just come to me and whine because he was tired (normally he whines for boob or food or whatever, but not usually for sleepytime). It makes me feel all warm inside! Needless to say, Andrew was sleeping by the time everyone finally arrived for the party (they're always late).

A cool fact, in case I haven't mentioned it before. My birthday is 6/25, Daddy's is 2/25, and Andrew's is 8/25. We were all born on the 25th (which is why I say Andrew had to come 6 days early). The numerology of it: 6 (June, Mommy) + 2 (Feb, Daddy) = 8 (Aug, Andrew). :) It's just meant to be perfect.

Gimme that plum!!!

Andrew and Daddy share a love affair with fruit. It's great! I am glad to start him off young liking something healthy. Daddy has shared many a plum with Andrew, and the other night I decided to just hand him a whole one and see what he did with it...

The results...

First, he took a couple of big bites...

And then he just kept on eating!
Note the size of Andrew's HUGE hands...

Oh yeah, and all of those teeth (he now has 16 teeth in--8 on top and 8 on the bottom)!

And yes, he ate the entire plum. As he got closer to the pit, I removed it for him and then he finished off what remained of the plum.